What Has Obama Done for You?

It doesn’t matter who the president is about abortion. There’s no president who can stop abortion. There’s no president that can or will ban birth control pills. Remember how this all started, this War on Women thing? It was back in January, and it was a Republican primary debate, and George Stephanopoulos asked Romney if he thought contraception should be banned.

Romney didn’t know what the hell he was talking about. Nobody has ever suggested banning it. (paraphrased exchange) He said, “George, I don’t know what you’re talking about.” “Well, should a state be able to if it wants to, Governor?” “Well, George, nobody’s talking about that.” But that didn’t matter. Now it was out there that Romney had talked about banning contraceptives. Stephanopoulos put the question out, Romney answered it, and therefore the narrative was complete.

They could then say in the media: “Romney talked about banning contraceptives!” That’s how dishonest they are and how they work, and it had to be coordinated because not long after that, here came this whole notion there’s a War on Women out there, where Republicans want to deny women birth control pills. Everybody’s sitting there scratching their heads. “What in the world is this all about?” Nobody ever thought about denying birth control pills to anybody, ever.

There’s not one Republican who thinks about that kind of thing, and certainly not in a political sense, not political issue-wise. But it was there. Stephanopoulos had to ask it two or three times because Romney was so stupefied. All Romney had to do was just say anything, just answer the question, and the press had the narrative: “Romney talked about banning contraceptives last night!” And that got the whole War on Women thing going.